Book Information: Island of the Day Before, the

After a violent storm in the South Pacific (the year is 1643), Roberto della Griva finds himself shipwrecked -- on a ship. Swept from the Amaryllis, he has managed to pull himself aboard the Daphne, anchored in the bay of a beautiful island. The ship is fully provisioned, he discovers, but the crew is missing.

As Roberto explores the different cabinets in the hold, he remembers chapters from his youth: Ferrante, his imaginary evil brother; the siege of Casale, that meaningless chess move in the Thirty Years' War in which he lost his father and his illusions; the Aristotelian metaphor-machine of Padre Emanuele; the lessons given him on Reasons of State, fencing, the writing of love letters, and blasphemy; the salons of Paris, the theory of the Powder of Sympathy, the apporach of his unapproachable Lady, then prison, and finally the summons of Cardinal Mazarin himself.
Umberto Eco tells of an international race to establish the Punto Fijo; of a young draemer searching for love and meaning; and of a most amazing old Jesuit who, with his clocks and maps, has plumbed the secrets of longitudes, the four moons of Jupiter, and the Flood.